Mentor Interview

Summary of Ruby Baker's Interview

A thing that I had found interesting from my interview with my mentor was how I could relate to her experience. She talked about how her parents kept pushing her to be a doctor. That’s something that I can personally relate to as well. Ever since I was a young kid, my parents had always wanted me to become a doctor and sort of pressured me into becoming one. Learning about her experience is reassuring in a way because I was able to learn that she didn’t initially know what she wanted to do when she entered college. One of the biggest fears I have right now is not knowing what I want to major in when I attend college, and not figuring out what I want to do. “Basically, initially, I was actually a biology major, wanted to go pre-med. I wanted to actually be a veterinarian, but my parents kind of pushed me into being a doctor. They kept saying that all the time when I’d say vet. So, I was at UCSD and I felt that it wasn’t a good match for me. And so I was like, well, I guess I don’t really want to be a bio major at the point.” I’m really grateful for all of the insight she provided me about her high school career as well as her college career. She told me her experience at UCSD and I’m glad that she told me because UCSD is the school that I would like to go to. She said that her experience there was most likely different that what someone attending UCSD would experience now. “State it’s an amazing place, they were just totally different and at UCSD, it was like, oh you’re a minority and you know, you’re kind of destined to fail, I kind of got that attitude there. So then, I just was in the wrong environment and it just didn’t work that way. And then, everybody is like, more like, it’s like budget school for the rich basically, so it just wasn’t quite a good fit for me. Now it’s different, I would not say that now about it because there’s a lot more minorities that are there and it’s so different, but when I was going there, definitely pioneer and trailblazers because there was not a lot of color.” I think a common theme that kept popping up during our interview was my mentor explaining her experience at UCSD. “Okay, well, I was at UCSD and then again, my parents were the ones that really pushed me to do that. So that’s why when I was there, I felt like it wasn’t a good fit. And it’s also to, like, you want to balance because some of the people there were not, how do I say this, well being a minority, and being like a hispanic where there was very few hispanics, even when I was there, people didn’t think I was mexican, they would think that I was persian.” I thought it was really interesting to see how there used to be very little diversity at UCSD because nowadays, when I visit it’s evident that there is diversity. I also asked her what advice she would give herself as a teenager as well as when she entered college. “I feel like for me, I would have liked a year off. And, in my case, to explore because I feel like I wasted the year at UCSD instead of not being able to just like enjoy being a human being.” I found it interesting how she would have like a year off because I know that a lot of people tend to think that taking a year off will just result in not wanting to go back to school. So hearing her perspective was intriguing, and after learning about why she wanted to take a year off made me realize that sometimes it’s okay to take a break from things and dedicate time to yourself.